Dell PowerEdge T110 II review

The PowerEdge T110 II is Dell’s first server to support Intel’s new Xeon E3 processors, and is aimed squarely at small businesses looking for their first purpose-built server. Prices start at only £289 exc VAT for a basic system, with a dual-core 3.1GHz core i3-2100 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB SATA hard disk, no OS and a one year on-site NBD warranty.

The system Dell sent us for this exclusive review costs a lot more than that, but it includes plenty of extra goodies. For starters, it was supplied with a top of the range quad-core 3.4GHz Xeon E3-1270. Of the 12 members of the Xeon E3 family, Dell offers four with the T110 II, so you can save up to £110 by opting for the slightly slower 3.1GHz Xeon E3-1220.

You can cut costs further with the OS, as Dell will give you a T110 II with Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation preinstalled for only £146 extra. Foundation has some limitations you need to be aware of. It’s 64-bit only, and supports a single processor socket and a maximum of 8GB of memory. It can handle up to 30 simultaneous inbound connections and supports a maximum of 15 Windows user accounts. Still, it’s a good deal, so we’ve included this in the price of the review system.

The T110 II is well built and small enough to fit under a desk, although from our experience you’re better off keeping it off the floor where it will suck up grot and carpet dust. It’s quiet as well, with the large rear-mounted cooling fan making very little noise.

The side panel is removed by pushing back a locking lever on the top panel, and this can be padlocked shut. The hole on the locking tab is large enough to accept a security cable, to stop the server itself being stolen.

The internals are tidy, with good access afforded to all key components. The server has room for up to four hard disks mounted in a cage at the front. Each drive is fitted in a plastic carrier which we found easy to remove, and Dell provides combined power/interface cables next to each bay.

Drive controller options start with the embedded PERC S100 controller, which requires the hard disks to be cabled directly to the motherboard’s SATA interfaces. This supports striped, mirrored and RAID5 arrays, and is sufficient for small businesses who don’t want expensive SAS hard disks.

Our system included the PERC S300 PCI Express card, which costs £73 exc VAT and supports 3Gbits/sec SAS, near-line SAS and SATA hard disks. And for £90 there’s the H200 PCI Express card, which is of limited value in an entry-level server, as it supports high-performance 6Gbits/sec SAS drives but not RAID5.

The processor is in the centre of the motherboard, with a large passive heatsink on top. This, along with the four memory sockets above, is covered by a plastic shroud with a large fan at the rear, and the airflow also cools the hard disks.

A single Gigabit Ethernet port is provided, along with an eSATA port at the back for adding external storage. Six external USB ports are also available and there’s plenty of room to expand using the motherboard’s three spare PCI Express slots. Along with the SATA DVD–ROM drive, there’s a spare 5.25in bay at the front.

Management options are more basic than Dell’s higher-end PowerEdge servers, as the motherboard only has an embedded BMC (baseboard management controller). It shares access with the network port and can be accessed remotely using Dell’s IPMISH command line utility, but this only lets you control server power.

You also get the Windows-based OpenManage Server Administrator, which provides local and remote web browser access. It doesn’t have features such as KVM-over-IP remote control or power usage monitoring, but you can view temperatures, voltages and cooling fan speeds and it can issue alerts when problems are detected.

With a low-power Xeon E3 in the driving seat, the T110 II is easy on the power as well. We clocked the review system drawing only 38W with Foundation in idle, rising to 110W when under pressure from SiSoft Sandra.

With figures like that, we think the T110 II is a worthy candidate for a first server. It’s well built, has plenty of room to expand and Dell offers a wide range of options when it comes to juggling the price. It wins a spot on the PC Pro A-List.

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